Today’s workers are being hit by data on all sides more than ever before. Relying on employees to capture data from documents can be a time-consuming process prone to inaccuracy, especially as your business grows. Employee work hours increase as the document volume climbs, driving up the cost of manually collecting the data they contain. Instead of dealing with data errors and overworked employees, automated data extraction offers fast and accurate capture from practically any document type, improves company efficiency, reduces costs, and frees up employees for more high-value tasks.
Software such as Upland AccuRoute makes automated data extraction possible by utilizing features that simplify data collection with templates using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. AI helps organizations learn about the data within their documents, providing even more accuracy to automatically build templates, which is the most time-consuming part of the process.
Data extraction and templates
Consistent and accurate data extraction from documents requires templates that identify where to look within documents to uncover the most relevant data to collect. Unfortunately, building those templates has historically been a tedious and complicated process. Upland AccuRoute addresses that problem by providing easy-to-create templates that are built to learn as you go. Template creation with AccuRoute does not require special coding skills, and nearly every document type is supported, including PDFs, graphics, files from a wide range of apps, and handwritten documents. Data can also be extracted from electronically provided documents; for instance, faxes, scans, documents captured as photographs, and data from webpages.
Extracting data without a flexible and reliable path to databases, apps, and other platforms makes using that content difficult at best. Choosing a data extraction system that doesn't require custom code is faster to roll out and dramatically reduces development time and deployment costs. AccuRoute is compatible with a wide range of tools many businesses already have in place and provides device panel access and support for most leading MFP devices. It can also route collected data to nearly any line-of-business application without special coding skills.
Efficiency matters
Manual data entry from forms and other documents is a choke point in modern business workflows. The AccuRoute team notes that switching to a robust content capture tool removes that bottleneck thanks to a significantly reduced need for manual data entry. Human touchpoints for data entry will not increase as your document volume climbs, making it possible for mid-size and regional companies to expand without the fear of outgrowing AccuRoute.
"We've been doing this for a long time for some of the biggest businesses in the world—but the direction we're headed with Learned Automation and AI is very exciting. It's allowing us to offer even more customer benefits by enhancing automation capabilities," said Brandon Cummings, Director of Product Marketing for Upland Content Lifecycle Automation. "As an example, a recent project of ours has been to help a large US-based fruit harvesting company manage their intense seasonal onboarding processing for 4,000 employees. Our solution automatically checks all of their documents for a signature, while flagging and separating those that are left blank, saving their HR staff hours every day and reducing hiring cycles by weeks."
Capturing documents for data extraction doesn't require custom apps. Instead, AccuRoute offers web and app interfaces for desktop and mobile devices. Once captured, company-defined workflows route the collected data to the appropriate department or team.
Accuracy and AI
Reliable data is critical, so AccuRoute's templates know where to look for content within documents and how to leverage AI to increase accuracy as more documents are processed. Templates identify where to look in a document for specific data pieces and recognize context, like seeing a properly completed signature field or an invoice number, then automatically grab that information.
The cost of working with inaccurate data costs companies on average $12.9 million, according to Gartner. Automating data extraction with the assistance of AI and templates greatly reduces the errors that lead to data reliability issues and cuts down on the financial losses that inevitably follow.
By relieving humans of the data entry burden, typing errors aren't an issue. But since AccuRoute is scanning documents that likely involve human input, its workflows support thresholds to trigger automatic approval or rejection, along with pause points for human review and approval. Once captured content has been approved, it automatically continues through the workflow.
Serious data security
Data privacy and security are required in many industries. AccuRoute is already heavily utilized by organizations in the healthcare, legal, and financial industries, so it is HIPAA, PCI, and Sarbanes-Oxley compliant and ISO 27001 certified. It also uses a secure connection that can be authenticated at all points to protect privacy and security while assuring auditability. In the end, high security and privacy standards mean better overall security for any company automating document data capture.
Adding up cost savings
In the fast-paced business world, cost savings that don't compromise data quality, security, or privacy positively impact a company's success. AccuRoute gives businesses a faster return on their data extraction investment by making AI-driven document template creation nearly effortless, as it requires no specialized coding knowledge. It also saves time by letting companies set up workflows and measure templates in hours, not weeks.
“AI and ML technologies are already supporting better-automated document classification and extraction by improving accuracy, which results in time saved,” remarked Cummings. ”But even more exciting is that these advancements also make template creation easier, which in turn enables organizations to more easily gather key information from their data and roll out new workflows with less effort. Just another way that AI is being infused into processes to help us drive a better return on investment.”
Ultimately, faster implementation and a reduced need for coding skills saves money. More efficient entry with higher accuracy leads to lower required employee hours, cost savings, and better ROI, regardless of business size. That all adds up to higher efficiency, accuracy, and savings that can have a positive impact on a company's bottom line—along with employees who are more productive and focused on the projects that really matter to the business.
As the use of AI accelerates, AccuRoute is at the forefront of helping businesses leverage the technology needed to manage and analyze data more efficiently without compromising on reliability and accuracy.
